Just allow us to transfer one character per month to another realm if we want. Like how item restoration works. If we want to transfer characters faster, we can pay.

That works for me. Over the years I've transferred/faction changed well over a dozen toons, not out of abuse but to follow friends. It's been pretty darn expensive and stops me from playing the toons I like. Rift lets you transfer toon(s) for free. That's pretty awesome, I wish WoW were like that. A bulk transfer or vastly cheaper transfer/changes would be VERY welcome. However, I imagine it's also a fair chunk of profit to Blizzard, so they may not let it go willingly.

I hope they also lower the price of name changing. I think it was like $10 to change a name? I think that's ridiculous. $10 to change one name. I mean how hard could it be to change a name on a character? For $10 I could buy a whole new game. I think they should at least make name changing free if not it should be like at the very most $5. As for the transfers I think it should be $10.

The current prices have got nothing to do with people abusing the system and everything to do with making money. They are a business. I would be very surprised to see Blizzard implement a system that earns them less than the current one. As long as people are willing to keep paying the current prices there's no need for Blizzard to change them.

You can purchase character transfer cards for $25 at Gamestop. The fact that they have a product line dedicated to profiting off low pop realm woes coupled with the big fat ignore at this problem for years now indicates this is just more give-them-hope-and-delay talk.

Posted by Amarielle: these services are completely 100% optional and are in no way needed to play the game.

It’s partially because of this.
Another reason would be to keep things somewhat stable, if these services were free or extremely cheap, communities could lose social and economic stability.

Social stability - Because realms are supposed to be somewhat insular, and that’s a good thing, one of the best qualities MMORPG’s have going for them is the social bond created between players, and those require time and a stability to create.
Players would also become less accountable for their actions (realm reputation would be very hard to assess), and we all know that unfortunately LFR and CRZ already hinted on how that can be a problem; we still we think the benefits far outweigh the risks in these two specific cases though, as they’re limited to the use of those features.

Economic stability - because not all realms are exactly the same and this would effectively allow the most enthusiastic traders and speculators to explore the global economy to their own best interests, which could have negative effects on a global scale or at least on the more economically vulnerable servers.

We could talk for hours about this, but that would be beyond the point of this topic, I’m sure you understand the logic behind this argument, some won’t agree with it and that’s ok, this can be quite an interesting and complex topic, just think about reality and global economy, opinions on that are far from being unanimous.

Now I understand that nowadays it’s much more common for players to have a lot of alt characters and when someone chooses to migrate, most of the times that player would like to take all his characters with him and that would come at a high cost.
Sometimes players will choose not to migrate at all due to not being able to afford it or simply not wanting to pay for all those migrations; now, although there’s not much I can tell you about this, I can say that we’re aware of all of your suggestions and requests regarding services, as you can probably realize, this is not the sort of thing that can be decided on-the-fly, but if we believe that there is a real need for some sort of change or improvement on our character services and that it could potentially improve gameplay, then I don’t see why we wouldn’t consider it, evolution and change has always part of Blizzard’s culture, especially when we talk about WoW, we’re nothing if not adaptable and iterative, so all I can say is that I’m not currently aware of any plans to change these services, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have them in the future, keep providing us with constructive feedback about it, I can assure you it can/will speed things up.

To an extent, I can agree with the need to keep realms as stable as possible, even the dying realms. If the "group discount" transfer goes through, and people finally get their mass exodus, it will most likely leave behind just a handful of people who did not go (for whatever reason), and now Blizz would have to figure out what to do with these refugees. I can see where the fee is a deterrent and a safeguard at the same time. But sooner or later, they will have to face the harsh truth that something must be done, but not before exhausting all financial resources. They are, after all, a for-profit corporation.

Wow so many people have no idea. The cost for server transfers is there yes to make some money but its main reason is to stop realms from becoming ALOT more one sided then they are now. If realm transfers were free EVERY realm would be 99% on faction and that would not be fun.

Wow so many people have no idea. The cost for server transfers is there yes to make some money but its main reason is to stop realms from becoming ALOT more one sided then they are now. If realm transfers were free EVERY realm would be 99% on faction and that would not be fun.

Yep, every realm would be safe since there would only be a dominance of one faction on each server. Guess what happens to PvP and wars with the other side where the other side leaves?

The plain and simple fact that it's price gouging bothers the hell out of me. I've been debating for a couple weeks now whether to get back into playing, but am stopped by the simple fact that if I were to do so, I would want to transfer to a friend's realm. The problem is, he plays Horde on a different realm, which would require me to pay not only for faction transfer, but realm transfer as well. That's $55 alone. Not to mention if I wanted to name or gender change, which I have no idea if either is included. (I doubt it). So that's pretty much the cost of a brand new game, just to start playing the game I also would have to purchace, as I don't have MoP yet.

All that, and it would be only 1 toon transferred. That is pretty unacceptable to me. I really don't see the problem with easier transfers, from a social or economic scale. People play WoW because they enjoy it. The argument that economies would be trashed doesn't sit well with me; we already have gold farmers and bots scattered throughout the game. High IRL prices to deter people from realm/faction hopping just to take advantage of differing markets on different realms is a weak argument at best, given how many people play the game just to play it, and hardly bother with the AH. The AH has little impact on dedicated raiders that do most of their own farming; little to no impact on people who play to quest and socialize with their friends; very little to do with PvP, where most of your gear comes from doing PvP. What do people go to the AH for? Mats because they're too lazy/don't have time to farm; BoEs because they're too lazy/don't care to raid; pets and mounts for vanity.

I really really feel that, as others have said, it's far more likely a money-making issue than a "oh no factions will become more imbalanced and realms will die" issue. They need to tone down the greed, especially given they're already charging more per month than damn near every other MMO currently on the market. Do they really need $55 from me just so I don't have to level a new toon from 1 to play with my friends? After I fork over $XX for the expansion and another $15 for one month of playtime? No, they don't.

I'd love to see either: $15 for realm transfer for one toon, with the option of free faction transfer, and $5 to gender transfer/name change combo (after all, that's cosmetic only); or $25-30 for an open, 24 hour realm transfer, applicable to any/all toons you want within that timeframe, after which it closes and you're stuck with what you chose.

On a side note, I think it's crap that the current limits on the Scroll of Resurrection are no later than March 4th of last year. A six month maximum should be implemented, imo.

If realm transfers were free EVERY realm would be 99% on faction and that would not be fun.

For PvP, maybe. But there are battlegroups to handle that. And Arena pits you against players, not factions, so that wouldn't matter either. If it's a PvE Realm, who cares if it's 99% Horde or Alliance? People there are there primarily to PvE, which doesn't care one whit the ratio of Horde to Alliance. Bad argument for high transfer cost.

"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord. I'm from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I'm 903 years old and I'm the man who is gonna save your lives and all 6 billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?"

The faction imbalances are an even bigger problem than low populations. They need to do something beyond a simple transfer function to fix that. I'm always astonished when I look at wowprogress and see the server ratios. Why the hell is nothing being done about it?

The plain and simple fact that it's price gouging bothers the hell out of me. I've been debating for a couple weeks now whether to get back into playing, but am stopped by the simple fact that if I were to do so, I would want to transfer to a friend's realm. The problem is, he plays Horde on a different realm, which would require me to pay not only for faction transfer, but realm transfer as well. That's $55 alone. Not to mention if I wanted to name or gender change, which I have no idea if either is included. (I doubt it). So that's pretty much the cost of a brand new game, just to start playing the game I also would have to purchace, as I don't have MoP yet.

All that, and it would be only 1 toon transferred. That is pretty unacceptable to me. I really don't see the problem with easier transfers, from a social or economic scale. People play WoW because they enjoy it. The argument that economies would be trashed doesn't sit well with me; we already have gold farmers and bots scattered throughout the game. High IRL prices to deter people from realm/faction hopping just to take advantage of differing markets on different realms is a weak argument at best, given how many people play the game just to play it, and hardly bother with the AH. The AH has little impact on dedicated raiders that do most of their own farming; little to no impact on people who play to quest and socialize with their friends; very little to do with PvP, where most of your gear comes from doing PvP. What do people go to the AH for? Mats because they're too lazy/don't have time to farm; BoEs because they're too lazy/don't care to raid; pets and mounts for vanity.

I really really feel that, as others have said, it's far more likely a money-making issue than a "oh no factions will become more imbalanced and realms will die" issue. They need to tone down the greed, especially given they're already charging more per month than damn near every other MMO currently on the market. Do they really need $55 from me just so I don't have to level a new toon from 1 to play with my friends? After I fork over $XX for the expansion and another $15 for one month of playtime? No, they don't.

I'd love to see either: $15 for realm transfer for one toon, with the option of free faction transfer, and $5 to gender transfer/name change combo (after all, that's cosmetic only); or $25-30 for an open, 24 hour realm transfer, applicable to any/all toons you want within that timeframe, after which it closes and you're stuck with what you chose.

On a side note, I think it's crap that the current limits on the Scroll of Resurrection are no later than March 4th of last year. A six month maximum should be implemented, imo.

For PvP, maybe. But there are battlegroups to handle that. And Arena pits you against players, not factions, so that wouldn't matter either. If it's a PvE Realm, who cares if it's 99% Horde or Alliance? People there are there primarily to PvE, which doesn't care one whit the ratio of Horde to Alliance. Bad argument for high transfer cost.

If you haven't played in a certain amount of time you get one free realm transfer and faction change as part of Scroll of Resurrection.

... Not to mention if I wanted to name or gender change, which I have no idea if either is included. (I doubt it).

When you faction change you get the option to pick any race that can be that class - and can change gender if you choose, you also get the name change for free. You can also get a name change when you switch server by 'reserving' your old name on that server (make a level 1 char) and then it is forced on you.

It is still overpriced, but I thought I'd let you know that they are included :P

They should just fuse all the Low-Populated Servers so that you get a couple of a new Mid/High Populated servers. That would be an easy solution seeing there a tons of empty realms with like 4 level 90s online etc.

They should just fuse all the Low-Populated Servers so that you get a couple of a new Mid/High Populated servers. That would be an easy solution seeing there a tons of empty realms with like 4 level 90s online etc.

There are people that want to play on low-pop servers.
There are people that want to keep their name (which could be taken on those other servers).

Honestly, if you move your main, and then decide not to move alts, you're going to waste a ton of time doing Blizzard's "we want you to play alts more! " shitty leveling game and not having fun (makes people quit), that and you'll have tons of 90's/high levels on dead servers that seem to be there, but in reality are just taking up space rotting there unused.